End September 2020 – Really coming to the end of the season

I seem to keep writing that the season is coming to an end, then it doesn’t. More of the tomatoes have finished and the plants have been pulled up but there still seem to be some to come. The outdoor bush varieties are making their way into the greenhouses as plants in the greenhouse are taken up and disposed of (this year I’m putting most of the plants into the council bin as we had bacterial canker and I don’t want it in the compost to be recirculated in subsequent years.

In a later post, I’ll have a discussion about which tomatoes have impressed me this year but I can say that one that I won’t grow again is Brad’s Atomic Cherry. This was supposed to be the “go to” cherry of the year, weird colour, slicing, high volume, etc., etc., etc.. However, it was a disappointment. I thought it was supposed to go “blue” but it was a sort of murky brown stripe which didn’t pick easily off the vine, didn’t taste all that good and didn’t keep at all well. Now, that could of course be my fault, letting them go overripe would give all of those symptoms but the ones picked earlier were bitter and didn’t taste nice. I’m sure that other people will have had more success and its my sense of taste which is at fault but there will have to be something special to encourage me to try them again.

We’re up to 37kg of fruit (and I’ve excluded the Brad’s Atomic from that weight) which is quite pleasing, its a matter of when the frosts come but most of the plants are “very poorly” with whatever has gone through them this year.

As for the rest of the garden, I’m glad I planted runner beans, something I’ve not grown for a number of years as they tagged-on to the end of the French Beans and have ended up giving a longer supply of green beans than would otherwise have been the case. Most of the dwarf french beans have now been pulled up and the climbing french are losing their leaves.

I’m sure I’ll write one or two more harvest related posts.